Autumn Reading List: Witchy Women
15 books chock full of witches, covens, and magic.
If ghost stories and haunted houses are my favorite spooky fodder, then witches are definitely a close second. I’ve been obsessed with witchy things since I was a child (guess my evangelical grandmother was right about Harry Potter being a bad influence, ha!).
For this iteration of our Autumn Reading List series, I’m rounding up my favorite witchy books! These posts get long, so I’ll keep it short. Let’s dive in!
Reminder! Paid plans are 20% off through this Thursday, 9/18!
Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman
For more than two hundred years, the Owens women have been blamed for everything that has gone wrong in their Massachusetts town. Gillian and Sally have endured that fate as well: as children, the sisters were forever outsiders, taunted, talked about, pointed at. Their elderly aunts almost seemed to encourage the whispers of witchery, with their musty house and their exotic concoctions and their crowd of black cats. But all Gillian and Sally wanted was to escape. One will do so by marrying, the other by running away. But the bonds they share will bring them back—almost as if by magic...
Witchcraft for Weyward Girls by Grady Hendrix
This book follows a group of pregnant, unwed mothers, mostly teenagers, in the 70s who were shipped off to a “home for wayward girls” to finish their pregnancies, have their babies, and then return to polite society once they’ve given the baby up for adoption and recovered from their episode of indecency. When the protagonist, 15-year-old Fern, is given a book on the occult by the elderly librarian, she and her rag-tag group of friends discover the ability to do actual witchcraft. The girls are finally given a taste of power in a situation where everything about their lives is dictated to them by adults who supposedly know what’s best – but they soon learn that magic comes with a price.
Weyward by Emilia Hart
Spanning five centuries, this book tells the story of three women in the same family, during different time periods. All of them are mistreated by men – and all three of them uncover a hidden source of power in themselves. In 1619, Altha is accused of witchcraft following a tragic death in her small village. In 1942, Violet is trapped at her family’s crumbling estate, left to the whims of her cruel and uncaring father, and a handsome, mysterious new visitor. And in 2019, Kate flees her abusive boyfriend in London for a rundown cottage left to her by a great-aunt she barely remembers. Across the centuries, the Weyward women pass down their knowledge, saving each other right when it’s needed most.
The Lost Coast by A. R. Capetta
Danny didn’t know what she was looking for when she and her mother spread out a map of the United States and Danny put her finger down on Tempest, California. What she finds are the Grays: a group of friends who throw around terms like queer and witch like they’re ordinary and everyday, though they feel like an earthquake to Danny. But Danny didn’t just find the Grays. They cast a spell that called her halfway across the country, because she has something they need: she can bring back Imogen, the most powerful of the Grays, missing since the summer night she wandered into the woods alone. But before Danny can find Imogen, she finds a dead boy with a redwood branch through his heart. Something is very wrong amid the trees and fog of the Lost Coast, and whatever it is, it can kill.
Her Majesty's Royal Coven by Juno Dawson
At the dawn of their adolescence, on the eve of the summer solstice, four young girls – Helena, Leonie, Niamh and Elle – took the oath to join Her Majesty's Royal Coven, established by Queen Elizabeth I as a covert government department. Now, decades later, the witch community is still reeling from a civil war and Helena is the reigning High Priestess of the organization. Yet Helena is the only one of her friend group still enmeshed in the stale bureaucracy of HMRC. Elle is trying to pretend she's a normal housewife, and Niamh has become a country vet, using her powers to heal sick animals. In what Helena perceives as the deepest betrayal, Leonie has defected to start her own more inclusive and intersectional coven, Diaspora. And now Helena has a bigger problem. A young warlock of extraordinary capabilities has been captured by authorities and seems to threaten the very existence of HMRC. With conflicting beliefs over the best course of action, the four friends must decide where their loyalties lie: with preserving tradition, or doing what is right.
The Tarot Reader of Versailles by Anya Bergman
It is the early days of the French Revolution and, on the streets of Paris, terror reigns.
Marie Anne Adelaide Lenormand is a young woman with an extraordinary power - through her tarot cards, she can commune with the dead. Her reputation is such that revolutionaries and the aristocracy alike seek her out to divine their fortunes, though she is loyal to Marie Antoinette and the dauphin of France. But Lenormand has seen the queen's fate in the cards, and must take care that it doesn't become her own.
Then, one fateful day, she comes across Cait, a scullery maid from Ireland who has travelled to Paris for love. Cait has powers too - she can read people's pasts as Lenormand reads their futures. The two young women have an instant connection, drawn to each other's abilities. But Cait is hiding something from her new friend – as much as she loves Lenormand, she loves freedom and her country more. What will she do – and who will she betray – to bring revolution to the shores of Ireland?
The Antidote by Karen Russell
The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing – not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the dust bowl drought but beneath its own violent histories. The Antidote follows a "Prairie Witch,” whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples’ memories and secrets; a Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch’s apprentice in furious flight from her grief; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town’s secrets and its fate.
The Bell Witches by Lindsey Kelk
After sixteen-year-old Emily's father tragically dies, she is forced to live with the only family she has left, an aunt and grandmother in the heart of Savannah, Georgia in a house as beautiful as it is mysterious. But all is not what it seems with the Bell family; they're hiding a magical secret. When Emily meets the alluring Wyn, she forms a connection that feels like it was always meant to be. As the spark between them grows more powerful, her life takes an exhilarating and terrifying turn; but every step closer to him, takes her a step further away from her family. Emily must decide for herself if blood is truly thicker than water.
Something in the Walls by Daisy Pearce
Newly-minted child psychologist Mina has little experience. In a field where the first people called are experts, she’s been unable to get her feet wet. Instead, she aimlessly spends her days stuck in the stifling heat wave sweeping across Britain, anxiously contemplating her upcoming marriage to careful, precise researcher Oscar. The only reprieve from her small, close world is attending the local bereavement group to mourn her brother’s death from years ago. That is, until she meets journalist Sam Hunter at the grief group one day. And he has a proposition for her.
Alice Webber is a thirteen-year-old girl who claims she’s being haunted by a witch. Living with her family in their crowded home in the remote village of Banathel, Alice’s symptoms are increasingly disturbing, and money is tight. Taking this job will give Mina some experience; Sam will get the scoop of a lifetime; and Alice will get better, Mina is sure of it. But instead of improving, Alice’s behavior becomes increasingly inexplicable and intense. The town of Banathel has a deep history of superstition and witchcraft. They believe there is evil in the world. They believe there are ways of… dealing with it. And they don’t expect outsiders to understand.
As Mina races to uncover the truth behind Alice’s condition, the dark cracks of Banathel begin to show. Mina is desperate to understand how deep their sinister traditions go–and how her own past may be the biggest threat of all.
Rootwork by Tracy Cross
In the summer of 1889, the lives of three African American sisters are upended when they are abruptly sent away from their parents and the only home they've ever known in a small, impoverished Louisiana parish to go live in the backwater with their mysterious, hoodoo-practicing Aunt Teddy, a powerful woman feared by some and hated by others. United by love but separated by passion, will their introduction to a world of mysticism and magic connect the sisters by way of ancestral inheritance, or will they be driven apart by forces beyond their control after tragedy strikes at the hands of a racist sheriff?
The Hounding by Xenobe Purvis
Even before the rumors about the Mansfield girls begin, Little Nettlebed is a village steeped in the uncanny, from strange creatures that wash up on the riverbank to portentous ravens gathering on the roofs of people about to die. But when the villagers start to hear barking, and one claims to see the Mansfield sisters transform before his very eyes, the allegations spark fascination and fear like nothing has before.
The truth is that though the inhabitants of Little Nettlebed have never much liked the Mansfield girl, they’ve always had plenty to say about them. As the rotating perspectives of five villagers quickly make clear, now is no exception. Even if local belief in witchcraft is waning, an aversion to difference is as widespread as ever, and these conflicting narratives all point to the same ultimate conclusion: Something isn’t right in Little Nettlebed, and the Mansfield girls will be the ones to pay for it.
The Diviners by Libba Bray
Evangeline O'Neill has been exiled from her boring old hometown and sent off to the bustling streets of New York City – and she is ecstatic. It's 1926, and New York is filled with speakeasies, Ziegfeld girls, and rakish pickpockets. The only catch is that she has to live with her uncle Will and his unhealthy obsession with the occult. Evie worries he'll discover her darkest secret: a supernatural power that has only brought her trouble so far.
When the police find a murdered girl branded with a cryptic symbol and Will is called to the scene, Evie realizes her gift could help catch a serial killer. As Evie jumps headlong into a dance with a murderer, other stories unfurl in the city that never sleeps. And unknown to all, something dark and evil has awakened...
(Side note: the original book covers were sooooo much cooler than the new, redesigned ones. I’m salty.)
Marrow by Samantha Browning Shea
The day Oona was kicked out of her mother’s coven, she gave up on her dreams of harnessing the witchcraft that was her birthright. Years later, she's carved out an ordinary life with her husband, though she is filled with a longing she can barely name. If she could only become a mother, then – according to island lore – she will come into her magic.
But after years of being unable to carry a pregnancy to term, Oona begins to feel desperate. Without the money to seek medical treatment, she decides she must return to the rugged, windswept island where she was raised – and to her dark, enigmatic mother . . . a witch who gives childless women the chance to become mothers.
Oona returns under the cover of anonymity, hoping for an answer. But, despite a celebrity clientele and a long wait-list, there are dark forces at work on the island, and as her time there grows more harrowing, the truth threatens to come to light. How far will Oona go to access the power her mother commands?
The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling
Aymar Castle has been under siege for six months. Food is running low and there has been no sign of rescue. But just as the survivors consider deliberately thinning their number, the castle stores are replenished. The sick are healed. And the divine figures of the Constant Lady and her Saints have arrived, despite the barricaded gates, offering succor in return for adoration.
Soon, the entire castle is under the sway of their saviors, partaking in intoxicating feasts of terrible origin. The war hero Ser Voyne gives her allegiance to the Constant Lady. Phosyne, a disorganized, paranoid nun-turned-sorceress, races to unravel the mystery of these new visitors and exonerate her experiments as their source. And in the bowels of the castle, a serving girl, Treila, is torn between her thirst for a secret vengeance against Voyne and the desperate need to escape from the horrors that are unfolding within Aymar’s walls.
As the castle descends into bacchanalian madness – forgetting the massed army beyond its walls in favor of hedonistic ecstasy – these three women are the only ones to still see their situation for what it is. But they are not immune to the temptations of the castle’s new masters… or each other; and their shifting alliances and entangled pasts bring violence to the surface. To save the castle, and themselves, will take a reimagining of who they are, and a reorganization of the very world itself.
Juniper & Thorn by Ava Reid
Marlinchen and her two sisters live with their wizard father in a city shifting from magic to industry. As Oblya’s last true witches, she and her sisters are little more than a tourist attraction as they treat their clients with archaic remedies and beguile them with nostalgic charm. Marlinchen spends her days divining secrets in exchange for rubles and trying to placate her tyrannical, xenophobic father, who keeps his daughters sequestered from the outside world. But at night, Marlinchen and her sisters sneak out to enjoy the city’s amenities and revel in its thrills, particularly the recently established ballet theater, where Marlinchen meets a dancer who quickly captures her heart.
As Marlinchen’s late-night trysts grow more fervent and frequent, so does the threat of her father’s rage and magic. And while Oblya flourishes with culture and bustles with enterprise, a monster lurks in its midst, borne of intolerance and resentment and suffused with old-world power. Caught between history and progress and blood and desire, Marlinchen must draw upon her own magic to keep her city safe and find her place within it.
More autumnal book recs:
It haunts me every year that I haven't read Practical Magic yet
Loooove the Practical Magic books so much 🥲